Historic and GM loco action at Westbury

Almost seven years on from my last visit (August 2018) and the prospect of some fine weather prompts me to pay a return (on 30 May 2025) to a busy Wiltshire junction to witness the varied railway action at Westbury, a place best known to travellers on the Berks & Hants route for its impressive white horse, carved into the nearby hillside.

Like Eastleigh on the South Western Main Line, Westbury sees a great variety of passing passenger and freight traffic, the latter largely comprising stone traffic from Merehead and Whatley quarries, but also including civil engineer workings to and from the large yard south of the station and occasional workings to and from Southampton Docks.

For loco variety my luck was in on Friday, 30 May 2025 when, in addition to seeing Class 59/66/70 locos in a variety of liveries, there was the chance to see two heritage locos passing through Westbury.

First up was Class 45 Peak 45118 (D67) The Royal Artilleryman, as it returned with five empty coaches from Salisbury to Crewe after a re-dedication event during the morning at Salisbury. The Peak had worked from Crewe to Warminster (3Z44) then picked up regiment representatives there before continuing on to Salisbury.

Then, just 90 minutes later, came light engine 37422, in its striking new HNRC livery, on a route learning circuit (0Z14) that was taking it from Reading to Derby RTC and made a fine sight as it stormed through platform 3 to the delight of enthusiasts on the platform.

Westbury station comprises two island platforms, with three platform faces still in use, after track through the original platform 1 – the down Salisbury line – was removed in 1985. All three platforms are now bi-directional and there are also up and down freight loops either side of the station.

While the locos and freight trains are stabled in yards on both sides of the line to the south-west of the station, the best vantage point for seeing action here is from a road bridge to the north of the station (Ham No.2 – 109m 55ch).

This offers you a panoramic view of the station in one direction and a view of North Junction in the opposite direction, where the route to Trowbridge and Bath diverges left from the main route to Newbury and Paddington.

What you are missing from this spot is fast trains using the 1933-built avoiding line, which is taken by many services to and from the South West, and occasional freight trains using the East Loop, a curve from the Newbury direction towards Trowbridge that can be seen in the distance.

A big change since my August 2018 visit, of course, has been the replacement on long distance services between London Paddington and the South-West of the popular Class 43 HSTs by the rather less popular Hitachi Class 80x units, which in their GWR green livery have been nicknamed “flying cucumbers”.

Many of these units working services between Paddington, Plymouth and Penzance will by-pass Westbury using the cut-off route to the south of the station, but there are still a fair number calling at Westbury, along with GWR and SWR passenger services formed of Class 158/9 and Class 165/6 units.

Anyone visiting Westbury and fancying a break from the rail action could do worse than pay a visit to the Railway Inn at the end of the Station Approach, where I enjoyed a fine pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord (4.3%/£5.05).